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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

Why does anyone buy fancy washers?

Using less water is what got me interested. When I bought it I was worried about loading the septic drainfield with excess water and soap. Then I moved to a city where water is very expensive. The energy to heat the water is a concern too.

I found that compared to a normal American style top loading machine with agitator, it takes better care of my clothing.

I happened to choose a machine that can spin at 1200 rpm, which is apparently rather fast for a laundry machine. The electric dryer seems to work a lot faster.

Now my machine is getting old, I had to repair the electronics once, and am wondering when the gasket will tear and will I be able to find a replacement, etc. I have had to repair top loaders more often but parts for these kinds of machines seem to stay in the market for 30 years or more. That's probably not going to be the case for this fancy import.

Fancy dryers dry faster only because the fancy washer is spinning the clothes faster at the end of the cycle. The technology inside clothes dryers hasn't changed in 30 years, even in the fanciest models. Look up the parts, they still use all the parts and design from models 30 years ago. It's actually comical. Source: I repair dryers.

They haven't found a better way to convert electricity into heat, or a faster way to use a flame to dry the clothes. Even old dryers had moisture sensors to turn the machine off once it sensed the clothes were dry.

The computer brained dryer might be better at temperature regulation but otherwise I see nothing that the mechanical timer-control and simple electronics can't do.

In the old mechanical brained dryers a simple set of thermostats regulated the temperature. They can be purchased for $5 on ebay to replace if they act up. A new computer brain? $100-$200

If it's available, that is! I know most appliance repair techs are not going to go through this, but there are probably two components on the computer control that I can not buy off the shelf. The SMPS transformer and the cpu with masked firmware. The washingmachine had a third, the 3phase driver for the big motor, which is off the market now.

I figured the simplest dryers just had a "one heater, or two in series, or two in parallel" switch and a melting safety.

You can do a huge load in a reasonable amount of time with energy efficiency and usually reliability.

Energy use reduction, they're gentler on clothes, automatic programs, less noise, better detergent dosing, ...

Fancy in what way?

It's just shiny. Cosmetic only. All the parts and design elements haven't changed in decades for dryers.

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